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Cadets 2017


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I know I am reaching out to the board members I know and trust.  Luckily I marched with one.

I suggest others do the same.  As has been said, organizational change is required.

Edited by cadet93
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11 minutes ago, onceuponatime said:

George Dixon, Your response to the post written by an '87 Cadet Alumnus was too condescending to allow it to pass unchallenged.

You made yourself a self-appointed critic of the concerns of this Cadet Alumnus who raised issues about the future of our corps...OUR corps, not YOUR corps. 

I don't know how you view your relationship to The Cadets. I know that you have been a very outspoken supporter of The Cadets, and you have our collective thanks for that support. Being an alumnus of The Cadets, with an assumed love for our corps that most people who have never marched Cadets do not understand, trumps fan status however. Even that of a fan who it appears has developed a close relationship with the current leadership of The Cadets.

I doubt that you will agree with me, though I hope that at very least you will think twice about what you said and how you said it. I think you owe this concerned Cadet Alumnus an apology, as much for your tone as for the slanted content of your rebuttal of what he had to say, and his reason for saying it. You don't need to agree with him, but you don't have the right to insult him regardless of your personal viewpoint.

 

 

 

This isn't the time or the place 

i have zero relationship with leadership, I didn't even comment on leadership

and I thought about what I posted before I posted the it, others should do the same

have a concern contact the board of directors 

Edited by George Dixon
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3 minutes ago, cadet93 said:

I know I am reaching out to the board members I know and trust.  Luckily I marched with one.

I suggest others do the same.  As has been said, organizational change is required.

Exactly 

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why not? Public opinion shut down? That is beyond your control. sad

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10 hours ago, 87cadet said:

This.  

Going backwards, yet again. 

Blame falls squarely on one person, yet again. 

Sad to say, but I no longer expect to see a championship contending Cadets corps unless and until Hop courageously decides that the Corps is more important than his ego. 

But I'm not holding my breath.

It's a tragic story repeated in business, sports, and the non profit world: overstaying your welcome, overestimating your ability, overplaying your cards, and stacking the deck (and Board) with yes-people who fail to see the obvious that any insider or outsider has seen for years.  

The current management model is too broken to tweak, fix, or reshuffle.  It's been that way for over a decade. Longer really, but changes in DCI and the wider culture (yes, there is a world out there that is not drum corps) has also changed enough to expose the Hop model as not just passé, but parasitic upon past success and gravely imperiling the future. 

Cadets are not a middle of the pack corps. They are contenders or they are not Cadets.  It's not about the medals.  It's about the art, innovation, emotion, and most of all education.  

Hop's publicly throwing the MMs under the bus on FB a couple weeks ago was the very last straw for me. That was ugly.  Worse, it was pathetic, even unhinged. Not everything must be social media "content". Not everything must be shown and showboated.  Let the kids, let the innovation, let the work, let the culture, let the performance, let the Art speak for itself. And I submit that all the Hop "content" on social media over the last ten years has been a sure sign and symptom of increasing discontent, another immature overcompensation for underlying lack of confidence, a clumsy attempt to cover a lack of faith in leadership by offering a pseudo transparency, a pseudo bottom up empowering and involving community, and too often, exasperating and utter ineptitude. Simple psychology: start with excuses, manage expectations, CYA, Doctor the spin, project blame, rinse, repeat. 

You can attempt to flush the failures down, and when the process and results are posted ad nauseam on social media, and it looks all white and clean and new, almost like fine China, it's somehow easy to delude yourself into forgiving and hoping against hope for next year, and the next year, and the next year, and thus forgetting that you need to stand on your two feet and back away to see you're still just looking at a toilet. 

This is a top down problem.  The many thousands of alumni and friends and current team members must step up to fix it.  

Now. 

It's done broke. We gotta get woke. 

I'm not gonna get stoned to be satisfied with the spurious "progress" of sixth or seventh. I'm stone cold sober. 

I am dismayed by those who see this year as a step forward. From what? 

Remember.....First as tragedy, or many of them, then a Stoned farce.  

I don't measure progress from a series of ineptitudes and chronic mismanagement that resulted in the open festering weeping boil of a show design like Stoned.  Hell, I even came out almost immediately after the show concept was announced a few years back and said to Cadets leadership and on this forum that "10" was doomed because it missed the entire point of the music, and sadly, I was right.  The design and executive team of any of half a dozen or more dci corps would have won with that monster corps of MMs, because they had better design across the board, and they consistently have better design because they have better management and better execs who leave ego at the door when they go to work.  

Nothing more important to a team than the leader. Any design or fundraising or morale or recruitment/retention issues are just symptoms of a kind of management that just doesn't work anymore.  

Tyrants and egomaniacs like Toscanini are dead, though today we have another similarly famous (though much less talented) leader whose name begins with a "T" that I wish were dead, or never had been spawned. So it goes. The new and usually very successful leadership and organizational culture model is much more egalitarian, empowering, non-hierarchical, nurturing, creative.  That is what millennials and GenZ love and have come to expect, and it's why Cadets have been passed by the Coats, Crown, Cavies, SCV, etc.  (And you think I'm talking about friggin scores, don't you?)

All those corps have better and more talented and creative and education-focused and empowering teams top to bottom. Or as I should say, better all around.  ;)

Hop must retire.  (He won't likely be fired with all his BFFs on the board though.)

So much talent out there to find better exec and board leadership, staff, etc.  Alumni and supporters would come out of woodwork to help and improve and reform and reload.  So many people have been sitting on their hands waiting until this leadership era ends and a new great era begins. 

Every year the cadets discussion threads generate more interest than anyone's.  So many people care.  So deeply.  So many people are so frustrated.  So many people need to come home and help. 

Thank you Hop.  I love you, but it's time to transition to another role in another organization.  

It's bigger than drum corps.  So let's aim higher, unafraid of the perilous skies, welcoming the springtime when kings go out through the Door, which, with our undying and renewed support, soon will reopen and surprise with a new entrance, not of another, but many hundreds, the family reunited and regenerated and once again revolutionary. 

That's my rocky point, my simple song, my simple gift, my demons and my better angels, my somewhere, somehow, someday. 

Zag!

FHNSAB

 

Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion about management or leadership style and effectiveness. And the objective results (finishing place) of The Cadets, which are one of the five main activities of Youth Education in the Arts, is a relevant piece of the equation.  

But let's remember a few things:  C2 (defending DCA champions), US Bands Marching Band Competitions, Concert Festivals, and XCape are also important parts of YEA, and as long as that is the case, then the board of directors needs to be looking at the whole picture when evaluating the performance of senior management.  Now maybe you have opinions about how XCape serves the Lehigh Valley, or whether US Bands is accomplishing its objective of maximum participation by any band that wants to compete. But if you are going to make general statements about the management, don't just talk about The Cadets. 

If you look at the background of the board members, you will find a mix of Cadet alumni, outside executives from industry, and a few friends of the CEO. The assertion that the board has been handpicked from a friends group is patently false. Furthermore, have you heard of any person who has applied to the Chairman to be considered for the board and has been turned down?  I don't think such a person exists. However, as with most philanthropic boards, agreeing to be a member comes with a time commitment and a donation commitment. So you don't get a seat simply because you care and are insightful. You need to actually step up, not just talk. 

So if you want to be part of the decisions, get off your couch, get out your checkbook and your calendar, and start making a difference. 

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3 minutes ago, Icer said:

Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion about management or leadership style and effectiveness. And the objective results (finishing place) of The Cadets, which are one of the five main activities of Youth Education in the Arts, is a relevant piece of the equation.  

But let's remember a few things:  C2 (defending DCA champions), US Bands Marching Band Competitions, Concert Festivals, and XCape are also important parts of YEA, and as long as that is the case, then the board of directors needs to be looking at the whole picture when evaluating the performance of senior management.  Now maybe you have opinions about how XCape serves the Lehigh Valley, or whether US Bands is accomplishing its objective of maximum participation by any band that wants to compete. But if you are going to make general statements about the management, don't just talk about The Cadets. 

If you look at the background of the board members, you will find a mix of Cadet alumni, outside executives from industry, and a few friends of the CEO. The assertion that the board has been handpicked from a friends group is patently false. Furthermore, have you heard of any person who has applied to the Chairman to be considered for the board and has been turned down?  I don't think such a person exists. However, as with most philanthropic boards, agreeing to be a member comes with a time commitment and a donation commitment. So you don't get a seat simply because you care and are insightful. You need to actually step up, not just talk. 

So if you want to be part of the decisions, get off your couch, get out your checkbook and your calendar, and start making a difference. 

There you go. " few friends of the CEO."

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Just now, E3D said:

There you go. " few friends of the CEO."

On any board of directors of a small organization there are some individuals who are friends with the CEO. At the company I work for that is certainly the case. But as long as such people form a minority of the voting members, then those relationships are a good thing because they can help bridge the gap when difficult topics come up. You sound like someone who claims to be well-connected. Look at the makeup of the current board and divide into the three categories. You will see that it's pretty evenly split in thirds (although there are a couple of names of Cadet alumni on the board who are missing from the page for some reason), which seems about right to me. 

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2 minutes ago, George Dixon said:

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  • Your Favorite Corps
    Boston Crusaders

LOL, it just keeps getting better.

Where is that sippy emoticon Teri always uses?:spitting:found it!

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